Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 84-minute class, Ven Jamyang teaches mindfulness meditation to beginners by addressing a central Western problem: the instinct to try too hard. He guides participants to relax deliberately—while staying alert—using the body and breath as meditation anchors. The opening practice builds body awareness, then shifts to observing the natural rise and fall of the abdomen with each breath, imagining lying on ocean waves. He gives detailed posture instructions and explains why gentle focus works: the mind’s habit of dwelling on past and future creates emotional turbulence, while anchoring awareness to present-moment experience naturally quiets it without force. When the mind wanders (which it will), simply bring it back—no self-criticism needed. Jamyang frames this not as goal-seeking but as observation and trust that the mind unwinds at its own pace. Immediately accessible to complete beginners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: jamyang – Learn to Meditate.mp3
UUID: f0fa50e5-e7b2-426a-963f-53e4d303ee4c
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Learn to meditate (Ven Jamyang)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 83.9 minutes
Words: ~2,778
Welcome, everybody. I see new faces. My name is Jamyang. I’ll guide you through two times twenty five minutes meditation, and we have a short break in between where you can stretch your legs or arms or, you know, drink, whatever you need to do. The main thing in meditation is that you don’t try too hard.
You know, we we as Westerners, we we want to be perfect. We want to do it right. We want to do our very best. Do a little bit less than that. You know, for the mind, it’s very important that the mind relaxes, that the mind what we want our mind is already tired and busy and crazy and tired, and what we want to do is we want to open up the mind.
Right? And only when we open it up first, we think that we go more crazy because we see more thoughts and more feelings and more emotions and but that’s normal. Right? But that that is a sign that you’re actually being more aware of what’s going on and that things are starting to relax. And then after that, you relax more and then the thoughts and emotions start to calm down.
Okay? We don’t have to push them down. We don’t have to don’t that’s as if you don’t do anything, but just relax, relax, relax. Okay? We do do a little bit, but don’t try to do it.
Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s like we’re always doing something. And if you do it, you try. And what you try to do is to go to a space where you where you where you do make an action without having that pushing that effort too much in it. In the beginning, we do put a little bit of effort in it, but not too much.
Okay? So we’re doing mindfulness. Is that is okay? Or do I speak Chinese? No.
No? We do mindfulness meditation and mindfulness meditation is that we try to focus our mind on a object that can be anything, but we start with the body and then the breath and then maybe more the body and then maybe the thoughts. I’m not sure where we’re going to go, but we focus on something. And then what our mind is used to is it starts wandering off. It starts to think about other things.
It starts to go back home and think what we haven’t done yet and what we have to do when we come back or what we have to do tomorrow or if you notice that, just bring your mind gently back and say, oh no, I’m now at Buddha House and focusing on my body, focusing on my breath and then your mind goes off again and you bring it gently back and then your mind goes off again and you bring it gently back. And that is what you keep on doing. And if you keep on doing that at a certain point you can feel that there was going to be shift in your mind. Okay, but you have to persevere. Don’t beat yourself up if your mind wanders off.
Don’t beat yourself off and take you ten minutes before you notice that your mind is wandering off. You’re just where you’re at and that’s good enough. Okay? Just work with that. Alright.
Everybody okay? Yep. So when we meditate, we make sure that our back is straight. And all the rest of your posture is not that important. But if you wanna put some energy in it, make if you sit on a chair, make sure that your feet are touching the ground, that you don’t cross your feet.
If you sit on the floor, you just sit on a cushion and you make sure that you have enough cushions under your bum that your back naturally can straighten up, that you don’t have to have hold yourself up. If you’re on the chair, don’t lean to the back of the chair, but try to have some space between the back of the chair and your back. And try to straighten your back from your sacrum or from your pelvis area by rolling your back. And you can try to find the right spot by rolling your pelvis backwards and forward. And then there is a spot somewhere in the middle that if you get there, your back naturally straightens up.
If you sit in a cushion, you can do you can roll your pelvis in the same way. And if you find that point where you feel that your back is straightening up, you stay there with your pelvis and let your back straighten up, and then you relax your shoulders. Your hands, you can either put them in your lap or in your thighs. And the meditation posture that is used in Buddhism is that you put the right hand on top of the left and the thumb slightly touching each other. The main thing is that you feel comfortable and that you feel that you can sit like this for about twenty five minutes.
Your head is a little bit bent forward. Your jaws are relaxed. Your tongue is touching the palate, and your eyes are closed. And close and too tight might make you sleepy. And if you notice that you have the tendency to fall asleep, just open your eyes slightly to allow a little bit of light to come into your eyes.
And then just be aware of your posture of your body. And you can go through all the different places that we just went through, from your feet to your pelvis, to your back, your shoulders, your hands, your jaws, your eyes as a kind of checkup. And you’re just aware of your body. Your body sitting. And if you notice that your awareness is wandering off, you bring it gently back to your body.
Try to be aware of the whole body. Being aware of the posture, being aware of tension that your posture creates in some of the muscles. Being aware of the relaxation that happens in certain parts of your body. Let go of everything that kept you busy today. And don’t rush into what is gonna happen from seven o’clock onwards.
This hour is just for you. You don’t have to remember anything. You don’t have to think of anybody, about anybody, of anything. This hour is just for you where you can completely relax and learn about your mind. Twenty four hours a day, we are with our mind.
We hardly take any notice of her mind. Twenty four hours a day, we are with our body. We take so well care of our body. We make sure that we eat the right things, that we move enough, that we relax enough, that we stretch, make sure the body is clean, that we’re wearing comfortable clothes, and all that attention that we put in the body makes us feel good. But if we look at our mind, it’s like we’re hopeless.
We have no idea what to do to make our mind feel good. The mind is uncontrolled running around, busy chatting, going up and down, and we have no control. Meditation is about learning to control your mind, not in a tight or suppressed way, But in a way that they say that if we control our mind, we will be completely relaxed. And control comes from knowing the mind. When we meditate, learn to know our own mind.
Your awareness is still with your body. And then focus your awareness on your stomach where you can observe the movements of your abdomen. Every time when you breathe in, your abdomen rises. And when you breathe out, your abdomen falls. Let your mind rest on these on these movements as if you’re laying on the waves of an ocean going up and down.
And if you imagine that you’re laying on the waves of the ocean, try to relax your body completely. Relaxation is a kind of surrendering. We can only do that safely if we are if we stay awake, if we are aware of every movement of the ocean, every movement of the wave. Try to sharpen your awareness, your alertness. Try not to miss any part of the movements.
And at the same time, let your body, your mind completely relax. Allow your mind to completely relax and be very aware of that relaxation. And you can imagine that every time you breathe out, you relax deeper. You let go more tension. Relax all the parts of your mind except the alertness, that part of your mind that is checking all the time.
The part of your mind that is relaxing lets go of the doing completely. The part that is relaxing doesn’t try to do anything. That’s just letting go, go, letting go at every breath you take. Letting go when we start to let go. We normally only do that when we fall asleep.
And in order to counteract that aspect of the mind, we stay very alert. We make sure that we are focused on the movements of the abdomen. We follow every part of the movement. Every time you get distracted by your own thoughts, bring your mind gently back and refocus. Keep bringing the mind back, to your body, to the movements of your abdomen.
And while you observe your mind moving away, bringing your mind back, try to see what distracts your mind. Is your mind going towards things that you like or things that you don’t like? Do you find the meditation worrying? And is your mind looking for more entertainment? Or are you longing for peace of mind?
There is every distraction there agitating your mind.. Meditation is about just observing. It’s not about achieving anything. It’s not looking for certain results. When we meditate we are just aware of what is.
And every time we bring our mind back to our body, every time when we remind ourselves of what we are doing, we create a little cause for peace of mind. Peace of mind is not the goal of meditation. It’s like a byproduct that happens. Sometimes during the meditation, sometimes after. Sometimes after years of meditation.
Observe what your mind does when you hear all these noises, sounds. And then you can relax your mind. And if you need a break, you can take that here. You can slowly open your eyes and stretch your body, being mindful of your neighbor who might want to continue his meditation. And then if you feel ready, try to go back to that place that your mind was in.
You can do that by remembering the meditation posture. And you can go through the posture by checking your feet, your pelvis, your back, your shoulders, your hands, your head, jaws, and eyes. And then go back to the movements of your abdomen. And then try to see if this is logical for you. We all suffer from a busy mind, a restless mind, a mind that is dissatisfied with whatever it gets.
And we would like to calm down that mind. We would like to find some space in that craziness. So if we observe where our mind is going when it gets distracted, what it does when it is not calm and peaceful, Normally, our mind is engaged in thoughts, and from that, emotions can arise. And if you look at the nature of these thoughts in the sense that where do they happen? Do they happen in the present moment, or do you think about things that happened in the past that you would like to change?
Or do you think about things that might happen in the future? Are you trying to prepare yourself for that. So, normally, our mind likes to go to the past or the future. And then by thinking over events again and again, we trigger emotions. Sometimes emotions of aversion, like anger and hatred.
Sometimes emotions related to attachment as excitement, hope, looking forward to something. Try to check if that’s true if your mind works like that. And then see that both sides of the emotions. Emotions when we have an aversion. Both emotions when we have an attraction.
Both sides bring our mind out of balance. Make our mind restless, busy. And although we are longing for peace of mind at the same time, we are very addicted to our distractions of mind. And you don’t have to accept what I say. Just check if that’s true with your mind.
And if it’s not, then you reject it. So if you can see that when your mind goes to the past, it creates restlessness, distraction. If your mind thinks about the future, the same happens. And the only place in our mind where we have space from that or peace from that is when we bring our mind to the present moment. Somehow thoughts do not arise in the present moment.
If we can focus on our body, which is always in the present moment, Thoughts might still pop over in our mind, but we just don’t follow them. We don’t indulge indulge in we don’t indulge in them. And because of that, we do not trigger disturbing emotions. And because of that, the mind becomes slowly, slowly more calm. Try to see that logic.
And if you see it, let that motivate you to bring your mind back to your body again and again. Meditation is about stopping following the fantasies that we have and connecting with reality. The only reality that we have is what is going on in the present moment. The past doesn’t exist anymore except as fantasies. The future is not here yet except as fantasies.
Fantasies make us crazy, and they’re not real. They’re just thoughts, ideas, beliefs. If we focus on the body, we can connect with reality. We can connect with what we experience right now. And you can check what do you experience.
And that can be anywhere in your body. Don’t judge it. Don’t follow it. Don’t hold on to it. Just see it for the moment as it is and let it go.
And observe your experiences with curiosity. What is it that is going on in your body, in your mind right now. You’re curious and you’re interested. And you’re prepared to acknowledge every moment of experience. And then the next moment, you let it go.
And if you can, keep on reconnecting with your body, the present moment, with your experience. Slowly, slowly, your mind will unwind. And that unwinding is a natural process. We don’t have to engage in that. We just create the conditions that it can happen in its own pace.
When we start to unwind, the mind moves towards its natural state. In our natural state, there is no need for doing. We can just be in a natural state. There is no judgment. No rejection or attraction.
But we just accept whatever is. That’s full acceptance. There is contentment and satisfaction. Bringing our mind back to the natural state gives us a break. Break from the busy mind.
And the more we become aware of that space from the busy mind, the more we will be able to cultivate it. Allow your mind to come back. You can move your body, and when you feel ready, you slowly open your eyes. Thank you for coming. What?
Good. So the Geshe-la is then instructing us to give us a good motivation. And with the intention of establishing all sentient beings in Buddhahood in the state of enlightenment. And I’m going to study today this text on the Bodhisattva way of life, the practices, the perfections of bodhisattvas. And I’m going to put them in practice, I’m going to study them, I’m to put them in practice, I’m going to meditate upon them in order to realize this goal of enlightenment, the enlightenment of all sentient beings.
So again, with this good motivation in mind, the one on the left side, extreme left. With this motivation in mind, then we we we are going to read the Heart Sūtra, and we’re going to go through the seven-limb prayer. You can try the master master volume. And we’re going through the seven-limb prayer and the mandala offering. And in order and and with this in mind, we generate this good good motivation.
Oh, yeah. Okay.